NAME

atc - air traffic controller game

SYNOPSIS

atc [-u?lstp] [-gfgamename] [-rrandomseed]

DESCRIPTION

atc lets you try your hand at the nerve wracking duties of the air
traffic controller without endangering the lives of millions of travelers
each year. Your responsibilities require you to direct the flight of
jets and prop planes into and out of the flight arena and airports. The
speed (update time) and frequency of the planes depend on the difficulty
of the chosen arena.

OPTIONS

-u Print the usage line and exit.
-? Same as -u.
-l Print a list of available games and exit. The first game name
printed is the default game.
-s Print the score list (formerly the Top Ten list).
-t Same as -s.
-p Print the path to the special directory where atc expects to find
its private files. This is used during the installation of the
program.
-ggame
Play the named game. If the game listed is not one of the ones
printed from the -l option, the default game is played.
-fgame
Same as -g.
-rseed
Set the random seed. The purpose of this flag is questionable.

GOALS

Your goal in atc is to keep the game going as long as possible. There is
no winning state, except to beat the times of other players. You will
need to: launch planes at airports (by instructing them to increase their
altitude); land planes at airports (by instructing them to go to altitude
zero when exactly over the airport); and maneuver planes out of exit
points.
Several things will cause the end of the game. Each plane has a
destination (see information area), and sending a plane to the wrong
destination is an error. Planes can run out of fuel, or can collide.
Collision is defined as adjacency in all three dimensions. A plane
leaving the arena in any other way than through its destination exit is
an error as well.
Scores are sorted in order of the number of planes safe. The other
statistics are provided merely for fun. There is no penalty for taking
longer than another player (except in the case of ties).
Suspending a game is not permitted. If you get a talk message, tough.
When was the last time an Air Traffic Controller got called away to the
phone?

THEDISPLAY

Depending on the terminal you run atc on, the screen will be divided into
4 areas. It should be stressed that the terminal driver portion of the
game was designed to be reconfigurable, so the display format can vary
depending on the version you are playing. The descriptions here are
based on the ascii version of the game. The game rules and input format,
however, should remain consistent. Control-L redraws the screen, should
it become muddled.
RADAR
The first screen area is the radar display, showing the relative
locations of the planes, airports, standard entry/exit points, radar
beacons, and ‘‘lines’’ which simply serve to aid you in guiding the
planes.
Planes are shown as a single letter with an altitude. If the numerical
altitude is a single digit, then it represents thousands of feet. Some
distinction is made between the prop planes and the jets. On ascii
terminals, prop planes are represented by a upper case letter, jets by a
lower case letter.
Airports are shown as a number and some indication of the direction
planes must be going to land at the airport. On ascii terminals, this is
one of ‘^’, ‘>’, ‘<’, and ‘v’, to indicate north (0 degrees), east (90),
west (270) and south (180), respectively. The planes will also take off
in this direction.
Beacons are represented as circles or asterisks and a number. Their
purpose is to offer a place of easy reference to the plane pilots. See
THEDELAYCOMMAND section below.
Entry/exit points are displayed as numbers along the border of the radar
screen. Planes will enter the arena from these points without warning.
These points have a direction associated with them, and planes will
always enter the arena from this direction. On the ascii version of atc,
this direction is not displayed. It will become apparent what this
direction is as the game progresses.
Incoming planes will always enter at the same altitude: 7000 feet. For a
plane to successfully depart through an entry/exit point, it must be
flying at 9000 feet. It is not necessary for the planes to be flying in
any particular direction when they leave the arena (yet).
INFORMATIONAREA
The second area of the display is the information area, which lists the
time (number of updates since start), and the number of planes you have
directed safely out of the arena. Below this is a list of planes
currently in the air, followed by a blank line, and then a list of planes
on the ground (at airports). Each line lists the plane name and its
current altitude, an optional asterisk indicating low fuel, the plane’s
destination, and the plane’s current command. Changing altitude is not
considered to be a command and is therefore not displayed. The following
are some possible information lines:
B4*A0: Circle @ b1
g7 E4: 225
The first example shows a prop plane named ‘B’ that is flying at 4000
feet. It is low on fuel (note the ‘*’). Its destination is Airport #0.
The next command it expects to do is circle when it reaches Beacon #1.
The second example shows a jet named ‘g’ at 7000 feet, destined for Exit
#4. It is just now executing a turn to 225 degrees (South-West).
INPUTAREA
The third area of the display is the input area. It is here that your
input is reflected. See the INPUT heading of this manual for more
details.
AUTHORAREA
This area is used simply to give credit where credit is due. :-)

INPUT

A command completion interface is built into the game. At any time,
typing ‘?’ will list possible input characters. Typing a backspace (your
erase character) backs up, erasing the last part of the command. When a
command is complete, a return enters it, and any semantic checking is
done at that time. If no errors are detected, the command is sent to the
appropriate plane. If an error is discovered during the check, the
offending statement will be underscored and a (hopefully) descriptive
message will be printed under it.
The command syntax is broken into two parts: ImmediateOnly and Delayable
commands. ImmediateOnly commands happen on the next update. Delayable
commands also happen on the next update unless they are followed by an
optional predicate called the Delay command.
In the following tables, the syntax [0-9] means any single digit, and
〈dir〉 refers to a direction, given by the keys around the ‘s’ key:
‘‘wedcxzaq’’. In absolute references, ‘q’ refers to North-West or 315
degrees, and ‘w’ refers to North, or 0 degrees. In relative references,
‘q’ refers to -45 degrees or 45 degrees left, and ‘w’ refers to 0
degrees, or no change in direction.
All commands start with a plane letter. This indicates the recipient of
the command. Case is ignored.
IMMEDIATEONLYCOMMANDS
a [ cd+- ] number
Altitude: Change a plane’s altitude, possibly requesting takeoff.
‘+’ and ‘-’ are the same as ‘c’ and ‘d’.
a number Climb or descend to the given altitude (in thousands of
feet).
ac number Climb: relative altitude change.
ad number Descend: relative altitude change.
m Mark: Display in highlighted mode. Plane and command information
is displayed normally.
i Ignore: Do not display highlighted. Command is displayed as a line
of dashes if there is no command.
u Unmark: Same as ignore, but if a delayed command is processed, the
plane will become marked. This is useful if you want to forget
about a plane during part, but not all, of its journey.
DELAYABLECOMMANDS
c [ lr ]
Circle: Have the plane circle.
cl Left: Circle counterclockwise.
cr Right: Circle clockwise (default).
t [ l-r+LR ] [ dir ] or tt [ abe* ] number
Turn: Change direction.
t<dir> Turn to direction: Turn to the absolute compass heading
given. The shortest turn will be taken.
tl [ dir ] Left: Turn counterclockwise: 45 degrees by default, or
the amount specified in 〈dir〉 (not to 〈dir〉.) ‘w’ (0
degrees) is no turn. ‘e’ is 45 degrees; ‘q’ gives -45
degrees counterclockwise, that is, 45 degrees
clockwise.
t- [ dir ] Same as left.
tr [ dir ] Right: Turn clockwise, 45 degrees by default, or the
amount specified in 〈dir〉.
t+ [ dir ] Same as right.
tL Hard left: Turn counterclockwise 90 degrees.
tR Hard right: Turn clockwise 90 degrees.
tt [abe*] Towards: Turn towards a beacon, airport or exit. The
turn is just an estimate.
tta number Turn towards the given airport.
ttb number Turn towards the specified beacon.
tte number Turn towards an exit.
tt* number Same as ttb.
THEDELAYCOMMAND
The Delay (a/@) command may be appended to any Delayable command. It
allows the controller to instruct a plane to do an action when the plane
reaches a particular beacon (or other objects in future versions).
ab number
Do the delayable command when the plane reaches the specified
beacon. The ‘b’ for ‘‘beacon’’ is redundant to allow for
expansion. ‘@’ can be used instead of ‘a’.
MARKING,UNMARKINGANDIGNORING
Planes are marked by default when they enter the arena. This means they
are displayed in highlighted mode on the radar display. A plane may also
be either unmarked or ignored. An ignored plane is drawn in
unhighlighted mode, and a line of dashes is displayed in the command
field of the information area. The plane will remain this way until a
mark command has been issued. Any other command will be issued, but the
command line will return to a line of dashes when the command is
completed.
An unmarked plane is treated the same as an ignored plane, except that it
will automatically switch to marked status when a delayed command has
been processed. This is useful if you want to forget about a plane for a
while, but its flight path has not yet been completely set.
As with all of the commands, marking, unmarking and ignoring will take
effect at the beginning of the next update. Do not be surprised if the
plane does not immediately switch to unhighlighted mode.
EXAMPLES
atlab1 Plane A: turn left at beacon #1
cc Plane C: circle
gtte4ab2 Plane G: turn towards exit #4 at beacon #2
ma+2 Plane M: altitude: climb 2000 feet
stq Plane S: turn to 315
xi Plane X: ignore

OTHERINFORMATION

· Jets move every update; prop planes move every other update.
· All planes turn at most 90 degrees per movement.
· Planes enter at 7000 feet and leave at 9000 feet.
· Planes flying at an altitude of 0 crash if they are not over an
airport.
· Planes waiting at airports can only be told to take off (climb in
altitude).
· Pressing return (that is, entering an empty command) will perform the
next update immediately. This allows you to ‘‘fast forward’’ the
game clock if nothing interesting is happening.

NEWGAMES

The Game_List file lists the currently available play fields. New field
description file names must be placed in this file to be playable. If a
player specifies a game not in this file, his score will not be logged.
The game field description files are broken into two parts. The first
part is the definition section. Here, the four tunable game parameters
must be set. These variables are set with the syntax:
variable = number;
Variable may be one of: update, indicating the number of seconds between
forced updates; newplane, indicating (about) the number of updates
between new plane entries; width, indicating the width of the play field;
or height, indicating the height of the play field.
The second part of the field description files describes the locations of
the exits, the beacons, the airports and the lines. The syntax is as
follows:
beacon: (x y) ... ;
airport: (x y direction) ... ;
exit: (x y direction) ... ;
line: [ (x1 y1) (x2 y2) ] ... ;
For beacons, a simple x, y coordinate pair is used (enclosed in
parenthesis). Airports and exits require a third value, which is one of
the directions wedcxzaq. For airports, this is the direction that planes
must be going to take off and land, and for exits, this is the direction
that planes will be going when they enter the arena. This may not seem
intuitive, but as there is no restriction on direction of exit, this is
appropriate. Lines are slightly different, since they need two
coordinate pairs to specify the line endpoints. These endpoints must be
enclosed in square brackets.
All statements are semi-colon (;) terminated. Multiple item statements
accumulate. Each definition must occur exactly once, before any item
statements. Comments begin with a hash (#) symbol and terminate with a
newline. The coordinates are between zero and width-1 and height-1
inclusive. All of the exit coordinates must lie on the borders, and all
of the beacons and airports must lie inside of the borders. Line
endpoints may be anywhere within the field, so long as the lines are
horizontal, vertical or exactly diagonal.
FIELDFILEEXAMPLE
# This is the default game.
update = 5;
newplane = 5;
width = 30;
height = 21;
exit: ( 12 0 x ) ( 29 0 z ) ( 29 7 a ) ( 29 17 a )
( 9 20 e ) ( 0 13 d ) ( 0 7 d ) ( 0 0 c ) ;
beacon: ( 12 7 ) ( 12 17 ) ;
airport: ( 20 15 w ) ( 20 18 d ) ;
line: [ ( 1 1 ) ( 6 6 ) ]
[ ( 12 1 ) ( 12 6 ) ]
[ ( 13 7 ) ( 28 7 ) ]
[ ( 28 1 ) ( 13 16 ) ]
[ ( 1 13 ) ( 11 13 ) ]
[ ( 12 8 ) ( 12 16 ) ]
[ ( 11 18 ) ( 10 19 ) ]
[ ( 13 17 ) ( 28 17 ) ]
[ ( 1 7 ) ( 11 7 ) ] ;

FILES

Files are kept in a special directory. See the OPTIONS section for a way
to print this path out. It is normally /usr/share/games/bsdgames/atc.
This directory contains the file Game_List, which holds the list of
playable games, as well as the games themselves.
The scores are kept in /var/games/bsdgames/atc_score.

AUTHOR

Ed James, UC Berkeley: edjames@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, ucbvax!edjames
This game is based on someone’s description of the overall flavor of a
game written for some unknown PC many years ago, maybe.